


Light the water, check for lead

by stegrits



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caleb is a good boy, Confessions, Drinking, Gen, Nott is a disaster mom, Spoilers, character backstory, found family is important, kind of, spoilers for episode 48, when it was just the two of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 09:50:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17558099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stegrits/pseuds/stegrits
Summary: She has only called him Luke once.(Nott thinks about that one night she called Caleb her son's name, but they were both drunk and he didn't really hear her. And now he knows the whole story anyway, or at least the important parts.)





	Light the water, check for lead

She has only called him Luke once. 

No matter how drunk, teetering on the knife's edge of giddy and desperately sad, she has only made that one slip. And it was in the earlier days, just the two of them, thinner and more hardscrabble than they are now.

Caleb doesn't remember the conversation, doesn't know, just like he doesn't know how she thinks of him, this fierce and grabby need to hold on to something, someone that can be yours. 

Not isn't sure Veth was really like that. Maybe it's just become more exposed, like a nerve. Maybe you acquire it, like a taste for rare meat. 

She thinks, now, he’ll understand better. What was it he said that night, before there was ever a Mighty Nein?

“It seems like meeting you was fortuitous,” Caleb said quietly. He almost always spoke quietly, but in the bright inn Nott had to especially focus on his words. The inn had a dumb name she'd already forgotten, the Dancing Something, but they put cinnamon and sugar in their whiskey and for once Nott had easily cajoled Caleb into having some as well. She'd found -- actually found, not stolen -- two silver right in the gutter early that morning and so things were looking up. 

Fortuitous. She rolled the word around in her mouth like a fat, polished stone. The kind of fancy word her husband might have used, might have taught their son. They were so smart! How many times had she said that phrase? But she couldn't tell Caleb about that, not yet. Maybe she'd have to, eventually, but for now she squashed down what she wished she could say.

“You're so smart, Caleb,” she said instead. 

He looked at her curiously then, so she ducked her head and had gone back to ripping up his bread in a somewhat vain attempt to get him to eat it. “Just one more little bite.” How many times had she said that phrase too, before? 

She tried to remember what they were talking about. She's successful. 

“Trostenwald sounds like a good idea,” she agreed, kicking her legs a little under the table. They wouldn't have reached the floor before anyway, so this didn't bother her. Next to where he was curled around Caleb's ankle, Frumpkin looked at her with his one open eye. 

“Bigger would be better,” she added, readjusting her hood and taking another big mouthful of whiskey. Thanks to a handful of raucous dwarves, no one was paying much attention to the quiet pair in the corner, and anyway she can't drink with the mask on.

“But also more dangerous, ja?” Caleb mused with another glance around the room. The dwarves didn't appear to be leaving anytime soon, and Nott’s fingertips itched to rifle through a few of their pockets. 

“We can handle dangerous,” she said. But really, as she took yet another drink, she meant she can. Hadn't she already saved his life, once, a dozen times? She worried sometimes in the beginning that maybe Caleb didn't need her as much as she needed him, but not anymore. Veth was always kind of a mess when she was younger, scraped knees from not looking where she was going and too much stuff in her pockets, but Caleb was infinitely worse. He needed looking after. And protecting. 

She looked up from her drink again to see Caleb now looking at her, fond. Nott thought, “He has absolutely no idea how old I am,” but this struck her as funny instead of sad. Everything was a little bit funny, at this point. And that made her happy. They had plenty of money to last them even through tomorrow, and a real bed for tonight and the whiskey was so good and it made her almost forget and. 

And also her cup was empty. 

“Do you want more?” she asked Caleb as she disentangled herself from their bench, narrowly avoiding Frumpkin's tail. “I'm buying!” 

“If you're buying,” Caleb agreed, and his eyes were smiling, mostly, even if his mouth wasn't. Luke had been such a happy baby. 

Caleb didn't tell her to be careful as she snatched his also empty cup and picked her way through the dwarves, but she knew he would be watching anyway. The harried human woman behind the bar would have given liquor to a pig if the pig had possessed the coin for it, and if the dwarves lost a few buttons and copper on her way back Nott assured herself they would not notice until well into the next day. And she could surprise Caleb with it in the morning. 

Well, the buttons were just for her. Unless one of them was really shiny, then she'll give it to him. 

That's love, she was pretty sure. 

“Hey, remember that time with the pie,” she started, gleeful, as she slid back into the bench. Her sleeves were kind of filthy, but so were Caleb's. 

Caleb nodded, which was enough to start a long recollection of their greatest cons so far, their closest scrapes and how they would have gotten out of them now. They so rarely talk about things from before the jail cell. 

They outlasted the dwarves and nearly all the other patrons, and when they finally followed Frumpkin’s sure padding up the steps, Nott had felt delightfully dizzy. It would be a slow start in the morning, but that was a worry for the morning. 

In their room, Nott immediately busied herself tucking all of their possessions under the bed, mumbling about nothing to herself as she decided to discard a few things. 

If either of them had ever found sharing a room strange or awkward, it was long and easily forgotten. They had done this routine, usually a little more sober, already countless times before. Caleb always slept facing the door, Nott on her back wedged between his hip and the wall. 

Satisfied, Nott had climbed up on the bed, big and clean and plenty soft, but Caleb was already asleep, half tucked under his dirty coat with Frumpkin enjoying an entire pillow. She had tried, before, to be such a stickler about housekeeping, to be a good wife and mother. Maybe you just got used to it, like claws and yellow eyes. Or pretending to be less sad. 

Asleep, Caleb did look less sad. She had watched Luke sleep so often those first few years, but Yeza had never teased her about it. 

The colors of their eyes were only a few shades apart. 

Caleb mumbled something in his sleep, not really words, as Nott gently moved his sleeve a bit so she could tuck herself under the blankets.

She stopped moving and considered his sleeping face again, the faint crease between his eyebrow at whatever dream had disturbed him. 

“Shhh, it’s all right, Luke,” she murmured, smoothing away just a bit of hair from his eyes. Caleb's face relaxed even as she realized what she'd done.

“Mami,” he said clearly, so young and with a little sigh. On impulse she kissed his forehead, still careful. Her teeth were so much sharper now.

“Shhh, go back to sleep,” she whispered, tucking his coat that smelled like smoke and sandy dirt more securely around both of them, her and her boy. The happiness in her stomach was better than the cinnamon.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Turtleneck by the National. Pretty much just my thoughts via some Fireball. This is my first Critical Role fic, and any weird errors are totally my own.


End file.
